Practice Velocity as a Startup, and why the Recession Can’t Stop Us

It’s amazing to look back and recall Practice Velocity startup. It all started as an idea – an intangible concept that had yet to be realized – but less than 10 years ago, it was just that.

I was working in urgent care with my two partners, Dr. John Koehler and Dr. Terry Buzzard, and we shared a frustration with the effectiveness of the nitty-gritty aspects of running our practice, such as billing, coding visits, maintaining a good patient flow, etc.

When we began researching software that could help us get organized, it didn’t take long for us to realize that there really wasn’t anything out there that met the specific needs of an urgent care practice. We weren’t satisfied with using software that was designed for a different specialty because it created much unnecessary work and frequent work-arounds. So we went with the best option we had available: we created our own.

We founded Practice Velocity in 2002, and our first customer went online with PiVoT®, our modified electronic medical record, in February 2003. Today we have a full line of services to offer urgent care practitioners, including a full EMR, practice management software, billing services, and contracting and credentialing services.And we certainly serve more than just the original urgent care client (I sure am grateful they took a risk and came on board with us in those early days). Our first customer is still with PV today, and we now serve more than 750 urgent care centers in 48 states.

That’s a lot of growth in less than 10 years! Our staff has had to grow tremendously in order to help us keep up, and this month we reached a milestone: we hired our 200th employee. We are humbled to have been able to grow jobs during such a severe recession, and we feel incredibly lucky to be able to work with such an amazing team of people.

Thanks to all of our customers for helping us grow to where we are today, and a special thanks to Marge Simat and Long Island Medical in New York – the very first urgent care clinic to use Practice Velocity.

Practice Velocity has come a long way in such a short period of time, but we’re not done yet! We expect to see more growth in the coming years as more and more urgent care centers look to improve patient care and streamline processes through urgent-care-specific software.